


The Ties that Free Me

by hokay



Series: Together [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Both literally and figuratively, It's hot, M/M, Masturbation, Mutual Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Pre-CDTH, These boys are so desperate for each other, They think it's unrequited but it's not, UST, Voyeurism, pre-kiss at the Barns, sweaty boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:47:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23256430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hokay/pseuds/hokay
Summary: As easy as it would have been for Ronan to pick himself off the floor and drive to the comfort of the Barns, he couldn’t do it. There were a variety of factors in play, despite the heat (or maybe because of it), that were playing into Ronan’s decision and he didn’t have the willpower to put a stop to any of them.One: It was hot, which Ronan would have been happy to avoid, except;Two: Clothing became more optional in the heat. That fact, in and of itself, was enough reason to stay on Adam’s floor, except;Three: The heat had somehow turned Adam - solid, immovable Adam - into liquid. And for that, Ronan wouldn’t have moved if the church had caught fire under his fingertips.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Series: Together [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1672174
Comments: 31
Kudos: 178





	The Ties that Free Me

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by a conversation that I stumbled upon in Discord where a couple of fine people imagined what it would be like if Adam and Ronan had to suffer through UST, heat, and emotions - I just wrote it all down and ran with it. 
> 
> Dedicated to [forestgetit (sneakygetit)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sneakygeit) for the original prompt, [Rozu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rozurashii) for the lovely beta, and [LiterallyLen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiterallyLen) for the world's best comments. It takes a village to write a fic, that's all I'm saying. 
> 
> Title is from _Together_ by Selah Sue (ft. Childish Gambino)

It was too damn hot for late September. 

All summer, Ronan had been looking forward to autumn and the cool crispness that promised his eighteenth birthday. Now, lying on the floor of Adam’s shitty little apartment, slowly melting, Ronan cursed global warming. He cursed Robert Parrish and Adam’s stubborn pride and his own goddamn thirst.

As easy as it would have been for Ronan to pick himself off the floor and drive to the comfort of the Barns, he couldn’t do it. There were a variety of factors in play, despite the heat (or maybe because of it), that were playing into Ronan’s decision and he didn’t have the willpower to put a stop to any of them. 

One: It was hot, which Ronan would have been happy to avoid, except; 

Two: Clothing became more optional in the heat. That fact, in and of itself, was enough reason to stay on Adam’s floor, except; 

Three: The heat had somehow turned Adam - solid, immovable Adam - into liquid. And for that, Ronan wouldn’t have moved if the church had caught fire under his fingertips. 

It wasn’t just sweat, although there was plenty of that, and not necessarily in the gross way Ronan would have thought. There was the lightest sheen on Adam’s forearms. His white t-shirt stuck to his shoulders and belly, and his tongue kept coming out to lick salt off his top lip. Ronan was also sweating, damp behind his knees and under his arms, even though he’d stripped out of everything he could strip out of (without losing his mind) and was down to just his jeans and a tank.

It was the way Adam moved - he seemed to flow from his desk to his bed, pulling books and notes with him as a current pulled at reeds. He didn’t thrive in the heat, necessarily - Ronan thought of how Cabeswater often welcomed its Magician with misting rain like it knew how much Adam deserved the kiss of water against his skin. It was more like he adapted to it, changing his molecular structure so that it couldn’t touch him. He moved effortlessly around Ronan as a quiet, murmuring presence that quelled some of the heat that threatened to consume him, inside and out. 

Ronan thought about what it would be like to take advantage of all that calm certainty, let it wash over him in waves. He felt a hot wave of guilt at the thought of taking from Adam without having anything to give. It was followed by a hot wave of arousal at the thought of _taking_ from Adam being the thing he _could_ give. He quickly rolled over onto his stomach, pressing his half-hard dick into the unforgiving floor, grumbling as he went.

Adam glanced up at him from where he sat perched on the bed, looking over his Government notes. 

“Can you stop fidgeting? It’s distracting.” 

Ronan snorted, pressing his face against the floor. It did nothing to soothe his burning cheeks. “This heat’s distracting. How the fuck are you studying right now?” 

“Some of us actually want to go to college,” Adam said absentmindedly, flipping a page. “Anyway, you have air-conditioning.” 

Ronan tilted his head up, neck stretching to look at Adam. “What?” 

Adam rolled his eyes. “You’re here, whining about the heat, but there’s perfectly good cold air at the Barns or at Monmouth. Why don’t you go whine there?” 

Ronan opened his mouth to deliver a Snarky Rejoinder™ when the ancient fan on Adam’s desk gave off a loud POP and the blades drifted slowly to a stop. 

“Oh, fuck me,” Adam breathed. Ronan’s heart stopped. Thankfully, Adam didn’t notice. With a frustrated groan, Adam pitched his notes onto the desk and scrubbed at his face. When he dropped his hands, he looked tired, wrung out and weary. Or maybe that was just Ronan projecting from all the looking without any touching. “Guess that’s that, then.” He glanced down at Ronan. “You should probably go to the Barns. It’ll definitely be cooler.” 

Ronan’s pulse thundered in his ears. It would be cooler, but Adam would never come with him, and the thought of Adam melting alone in this tiny apartment was more than Ronan could bear. He pressed his face back into the floorboards and said nothing. 

After a moment, Adam snorted and something soft hit the back of Ronan’s head. Without looking up, he pulled the pillow beneath him, curling his arms around it and burying his face. 

“Suit yourself,” he heard Adam say. The mattress creaked and one of Adam’s knees popped. Ronan burned to look and didn’t dare. “I’m gonna take a shower, try to cool off.” They both breathed in the heavy air for a moment, waiting. 

Adam said, “You can go after if you want,” and Ronan tried not to imagine all the possibilities in his voice. 

Ronan didn’t breathe again until the bathroom door clicked shut behind Adam. He took in a deep lungful of air, breathing in Adam’s scent, trapped in his pillow. It wasn’t doing anything for his hard-on - at least nothing that would make it go away - so he tossed it back on the bed and willed his cock to behave. He thought of Matthew, of the altar below them, of Declan’s new girlfriend, of anything disgusting he could possibly imagine until the door opened again and Adam emerged. He was wrapped in a towel and when he caught Ronan looking, he gave that small, secret smile Ronan craved and shook his head like a dog, spraying cold water everywhere. 

“Jesus Mary!” Ronan yelped, scrambling backward. “Parrish, you fuck!” 

Adam laughed, clutching the towel around his waist. “You’re such a jerk,” he said. “My floor can’t be that comfortable.” He reached for a clean pair of boxers in the carton that served as a dresser drawer and Ronan’s head hit the floor once again. 

“This is hell,” he muttered. “I’m doing penance.” 

Adam made a considering noise above him. “Whatever you say, man.” There was the sound of a wet towel hitting the floor and uneven thumping as Adam stepped into his underwear. 

Ronan bit his tongue, hard, before he said something foolish. He heard Adam walk around him, rummaging with something on the desk, and the soft sounds of him messing with the blankets on his bed. Ronan felt like he was going to fly apart. He pushed up off the floor, throwing himself towards the bathroom. 

Inside, behind the safety of the rickety door, Ronan pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, breath barely making it through his lungs. It felt like he was having a panic attack, but he couldn’t ever remember being this hard during a panic attack. His pulse thundered in his ears as sweat meandered sinfully down his spine. Everything was too much and not enough. Another word, look, or breath from Adam and Ronan didn’t know what he’d do - something stupid, no doubt. 

He turned on the shower to avoid suspicion but it was a minute before he could convince his arms to pull off his clothing, leaving shirt, jeans, and boxer briefs in a messy pile. It was another minute before he was able to get his breath under control and step under the shower spray. 

Ronan stood, letting the cool water beat down on his head and shoulders. It slipped pleasantly over his scalp, washing away the sweat that had collected at the small of his back and in his collarbones. He tilted his face into it, opening his mouth enough to catch a few drops on his tongue. He opened his eyes, blinking against the feel of water against his eyelashes, and caught sight of Adam’s dollar-store body wash. 

All at once, Ronan’s imagination flooded him with the thought of Adam standing there, catching water on his tongue, eyelashes clumped like starbursts. Adam, nipples peaked in the freezing water, hair darkening everywhere as he washed away the day’s grime. His hands, long and elegant even when they were streaked with oil and grease, slipping over his stomach and the jut of his hip bones. Adam, who thought he came from dirt when Ronan was certain he was made of silver and gold, burning as he-

“Shit,” Ronan gasped, pulling his hand away from where it had drifted down his own stomach, running through the trail of hair below his belly button. He smacked his palm against the shower wall as his cock twitched unhelpfully. Ronan watched as a drop of precome welled up, pushing out and spilling over the tip. “Shit, shit, shit,” he whispered, squeezing his eyes shut. 

A cold shower was supposed to fix this shit, not make it worse. He muttered his way through one decade of the Rosary - the Sorrowful Mysteries, because why not? Surely Jesus understood this agony, too - before his erection subsided and he deemed it safe to climb out. He slipped back into his tank and boxers, still dripping from the shower, but carried his jeans in a ball in front of him, just in case. 

When he emerged, the only light in the room was from the streetlight outside. He could barely see Adam’s form in the darkness, lying on his side in bed, facing away from Ronan towards the wall. He’d laid the sheet out on the floor as a makeshift pallet. Ronan chewed the inside of his lip to keep from smiling and folded his jeans into a more pillow-like shape. Throwing them down, he made the split-second decision to add his tank to the pile for extra cushion and threw himself down on top of it all. 

“Oh, my god.” Ronan jumped when he heard Adam’s laugh. “Can you even try to be quiet?” 

“Too fucking hot,” Ronan snapped, heart racing. “Just go to sleep, Parrish, fuck.” 

Adam laughed again and then was silent. Illogically, the darkness made everything worse. The heat pressed down around them, physically sitting on their chests until breathing became labored. Panting, stuttered breaths filled the small apartment. Ronan closed his eyes and did everything he could to block out the sound of Adam, three feet away and quietly gasping. 

After a few minutes (or hours, Ronan had no concept of time anymore), Adam rolled off his bed and crept to the tiny minifridge next to the apartment door. He glanced at Ronan as he went. 

“You want one?” he whispered. Ronan shrugged as well as one could shrug lying prone on an unforgiving wooden floor. 

Adam scoffed and reached into the fridge, pulling out two bottles of water. The streetlight lit him up as he reached over to hand the bottle to Ronan. Ronan sat up, hand extended, ready to take it, when Adam’s eyes jumped to his and his eyebrow quirked up, just for a second. 

The shock of the ice-cold water bottle hitting him square in the chest made Ronan say a lot of words that definitely shouldn’t have been said in the vicinity of a church. He fumbled with the bottle, swearing again as it rattled against his bare inner thighs, leaving a freezing burn against his skin. 

Above him, Adam cackled, cracking open his own water bottle to take a long swig. The streetlight illuminated the delicate curve of his neck, the sweeping connection between his shoulders and his throat. His hair fell in messy curls around his ears, mussed from being wet and laid on. It should have looked ridiculous - it didn’t. Ronan’s mouth went dry as he watched, drinking in his fill of Adam Parrish the way Adam was currently gulping down water. He barely noticed when Adam came up for air and there was a long silence as Ronan’s eyes traveled the naked expanse of Adam’s chest and stomach. 

“S’rude to stare, Lynch,” Adam said softly and Ronan’s eyes snapped up to meet his. There was a furrow between Adam’s brows and Ronan longed to smooth it with his fingers, slip them down over the crooked bridge of Adam’s nose. He felt his face go hot, even in the heat of the apartment, and he scoffed, shaking his head. 

“Just trying to figure out how a motherfucker like you tricked everyone into thinking you’re such a goddamn choir boy,” Ronan spat. 

Adam regarded him for a second, head tilted like a puppy, before he smiled, that small and wistful grin that Ronan craved. “Maybe I am,” he said, picking his way across the floor to the bed. “Maybe you just don’t know.” 

“Oh, I know, Parrish,” Ronan said without thinking. “I know better than you think.” 

Adam chuckled, tumbling into bed and letting his water bottle fall to the floor. “I know,” he said softly. “I do, I promise.” 

Quiet surrounded them, then, and Ronan started to drift off. He was toeing the line between dozing and sleep when he felt it - the telltale twitch of his cock against his thigh, filling lazily. 

“Fuck off,” Ronan breathed, rolling onto his stomach. Pressing it into the floor did little and his hips jerked unhelpfully at the pressure. 

The bed rustled again, and then: 

“I can’t sleep when it’s this hot.” 

Ronan froze. He fought hard with himself for a moment before glancing over. Adam had shifted to the very edge of the bed, fingers brushing the floor, practically melting off the mattress. His boxers had ridden up so one pale thigh gleamed in the darkness. Ronan bit back a moan. 

“So...what, then?” he croaked.

Adam didn’t turn his head from where he was staring at the ceiling. “Look-” 

“What, Parrish?” 

His eyes squeezed shut. “I gotta...I mean, it’ll help.” 

“What?” Finally, Ronan’s brain caught up to what his body had known for hours and he was almost dizzy with it, wanting and _wanting_. “Oh.” 

Adam didn’t open his eyes. “If it bothers you, just don’t-”

Ronan swallowed hard. It felt like all his hopes and fears at once had been crammed into his throat and now he could either swallow and die or choke on them and die. Either way, he was going to die. “It won’t bother me.” He pushed over onto his back.

Adam’s head turned towards him and his fingertips twitched against the apartment floor. Ronan couldn’t see his right hand, but he heard the rustle of boxers being pushed away and the slick motion of a hand, stroking. 

Without any trace of conscious thought, Ronan’s hand slipped into his boxer briefs. Even with the heat of the room, he was so hard and blood-flushed that his fingers felt cool. He let himself feel it, just for a second, before stroking downwards. He let his fingers play over his skin, all senses intensified by the heat before he made a fist and squeezed tightly over the head. As in the shower, a small drop of precome leaked between his fingers and Ronan’s throat worked, a breathless whimper escaping as he twisted his hand. 

Next to him on the mattress, Adam gasped. Ronan’s gaze was drawn instantly to the boy next to him, drunk on the sight of Adam’s eyes fixed where Ronan’s hand disappeared under the waist of his underwear. Adam looked up and their eyes met as he realized that Ronan was watching him. 

“Fuck,” Adam moaned. Ronan bit his lip, hips shifting as he fucked up into his hand. He’d known for a while that Adam swearing - rare and beautiful - was heady for him, but hearing him like this was sure to be Ronan’s undoing. 

Neither looked away as they frantically jacked themselves, teasing just enough to stretch the moment into forever. Ronan ran the fingers of his left hand over his stomach. Adam, breathless and flushed, watched for a moment before he licked his lips and reached up to run a thumb over the nipple closest to Ronan, immediately in Ronan’s line of sight. His mouth, already panting, dropped open further and Ronan saw the tip of his tongue come up, run over the ridge of his front teeth. 

“Jesus,” Ronan gasped. He was soaking now, leaking copiously in his underwear. He thought about pushing the entire mess down around his knees but he couldn’t. As long as Adam stayed covered, Ronan would, too. 

He rode the crest for a while longer, too caught up in Adam to even think about an orgasm. Then, as though in a dream, he saw Adam’s hand reach out, slender fingers tentatively curled towards him as they came to light on Ronan’s wrist, just above the elastic. He gently navigated the leather bands until he was met with naked skin. The touch was ghost-light, almost nothing, but the sight of Adam’s fingers pressed against the inside of his arm, the potential of him reaching down into Ronan’s shorts, was too much. With a grunt, Ronan cupped the head of his cock as he came. It dripped over his belly and into the crease of his thigh, crawling towards his balls. 

He heard a choking gasp and Adam’s nails dug into his skin as he threw his head back on the bed, right arm working frantically as he came. 

Ronan lay there, quiet, as Adam’s hand slowly fell from his wrist. Ronan never needed any help ruining a moment but he wanted to hold onto this one as long as he could, keep it tucked into his chest for safekeeping. He could feel the tension rising up around them, a living thing that threatened to make everything ugly if Ronan wouldn’t.

He squeezed his eyes shut and let his head turn away from the bed, willing his chest to rise and fall steadily though his heart was still racing. He heard Adam say the beginning of his name, once, barely anything, before Adam sighed and rolled over to face the wall. Ronan slowly counted to 100, listened to Adam’s breathing even out before he carefully picked himself off the floor, not bothering to pull on his jeans as he picked up his boots and slipped out the door, shutting it carefully behind him. 

He crept down the stairs until he reached the bottom, where he savagely threw on his jeans and boots, not bothering to be quiet now that there was no sleeping boy to disturb. He stalked to the BMW and threw himself into it. His music blared as he pulled out of the St. Agnes parking lot and took off into the Henrietta night. 

His hands shook until he clenched them around the steering wheel. Sweat trickled down his back as he rolled the window down and let the wind whip around him as he flew down the road. He wasn’t headed to the Barns or Monmouth, or anywhere; he was still thinking about Adam’s blue eyes, shining in the darkness, the wet fullness of his lips and his fingers brushing the inside of Ronan’s wrist, toying with his bracelets. Ronan let himself touch where Adam’s hand had been, just once, before he slammed his palm against the gearshift and coaxed the BMW into a roar. 

He was going to kiss that boy, even if it killed him.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [Tumblr](https://pastelle-pvnk.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
